Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Image Bearers: Why You Were Made to Rule, Create & Reflect God

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

Why do you feel drawn to build, make, or create something bigger than yourself? Turns out that instinct isn't random — it's rooted in the opening chapters of Genesis.📖 Pre-order Jonny Ardavanis's new book Get to Work: Seeing Your Daily Grind as God’s Good Gift here: https://a.co/d/04k0sFpoIn this episode, we continue our series exploring the biblical theology of work (pulled from Jonny's forthcoming book, "Get to Work") by digging into Genesis 1 and 2. We unpack what it means that humanity is made in God's image, what the Hebrew words "radah" (rule) and "kabash" (subdue) actually mean, and why God — who could have created a "finished" universe — instead invited us into the ongoing work of cultivating, building, and creating beauty.We also talk about Bezalel, the little-known craftsman in Exodus 31 who was the first person in Scripture described as "filled with the Spirit of God" — not for preaching, but for his artistry. Plus: why beauty isn't just decoration but a reflection of who God is, how "ordinary" work like folding laundry or fixing pipes can be done to the glory of God, and why your job (whatever it is) matters more than you think.📖 Scripture referenced: Genesis 1:1, 1:26-28, 2:2-9, Exodus 31, Psalm 145:16, Psalm 147:13✉️ Sign up for free weekly newsletter devotionals at www.dialinministries.org🙏 This episode is brought to you by The Master's University — committed to Jesus Christ and the authority and sufficiency of His Word. Learn more at masters.edu

How you engage with the Word of God matters. Psalm 1 calls us to meditate on the scripture day and night, and the CSB spiral-bound note-taking Bible is a fantastic tool to help you do exactly that. It's spiral-bound, so it lays flat and stays flat and has these wide margins so that you can include your own observations and not just someone else's commentary. It comes in five volumes, the Pentateuch, the historical books, wisdom and poetry, prophets, and New Testament, so you can go deep into God's Word one section at a time.

And over time, it'll become your own personal record, of your walk with God and your growth and understanding of his word. You can get the full set or start with one volume. Your notes matter, and you can start today. Where's the first time we see the term filled with the spirit of God in the scripture? Well, it's not an axe. It's actually in Exodus 31, and it's not in relation to Moses. It's in relationship to Bezalel, who is the craftsman for the tabernacle.

And God looks at a guy who never, as far as we know, speaks a single word, preaches a single sermon in the Bible, but that is crafting and sculpting the tabernacle. And God says, this guy gets it. This guy is filled with the spirit of God, not because he's preaching great sermons, but because he is reflecting who God is as an artist. If you've ever had that thought,

I feel like I was made for something big, something epic, something kingly, something royal. Well, that actually finds its root in the opening chapter of the scripture because humanity was made to rule on behalf of our king, the creator of the universe, and it draws us to ask the question, if this is who God is, what does that mean for me as someone who is made in his image? Hank, how we doing? Doing wonderful, Johnny.

How are you today? Good. We want to continue the series that we started in our previous episodes. If you haven't listened, you can go back. I'm exploring with Hank some of the major themes from my forthcoming book, Get to Work, seeing your daily grind as God's Good Gift. And as it relates to the subject of work, when we even use that word, work, I'm referring to whatever you do. So it could be your work as a mechanical engineer, as a plumber, a student, a mother, a CEO, a pastor, whatever it may be, your vocation.

What God has called you to do in this season, it doesn't have to be your forever job to think through it with the biblical perspective and the here and now. And in the world in which we live, there is disagreement at times. I think even in the church, some say that work is a means to an end, a necessary evil, Others say that it is the very purpose of our life so that our identity gets just completely wrapped up in our production. But we need to have a biblical perspective because we've talked about this before. You're going to spend the majority of your waking hours, one-third of your existence, working. Yeah.

And it's one of those, I think one, it's often disconnected. A bunch of people can feel, all speak personally. Like how does my day-to-day actually add up and matter to God? And it's one of those conversations. It feels like many of the conversations will sit down to record on. It's easy to fall on either side of the ditch. But to your point, if we return to the Bible, our goal isn't to auto-correct for culture, but rather find what does the Bible say about work?

And you touched on this briefly last week, and maybe we can touch on it as we dive in. But before we can talk about work, we actually need to pause and set the table about the creator of work to better understand, not just how does this apply to me, but actually how does this point to who God is? Yeah, I think because our lives are often busy, and I don't like using the word busy, like when we approach a subject, we want to know immediately, how does this apply to me? But most of the truth in the Bible is implicational and not applicational. What does that mean? Yeah.

Meaning when you open up the Bible doesn't give you like, hey, five ways this applies to you. The Bible is fundamentally a story about God. And it draws us to ask the question, if this is who God is, what does that mean for me as someone who is made in his image? And so that's the way that we're looking at it, at least in this episode. Now, next episode, just to forecast a little bit, Lord willing, we're going to look at what does it mean to work in a fallen world. But before we get there, we still need to understand some core, core doctrine, core truths about God. And I don't even, sometimes when you say that, it's like, it's just people think theoretical. But this is the story of scripture. And I want to immerse us here in the opening verse, because

the very first sentence of the Bible describes God's commitment to work. Genesis 1-1 says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And one pastor puts it this way. And the way that God builds, the way he works, is not as a warrior digs a trench, but as an artist who makes a masterpiece. peace. And in this opening verse where God created the heavens in the earth, Francis Schaefer, the great Christian philosopher, said, this is the most pregnant sentence of all time, because all of our core questions in life of origin, purpose, destiny, who am I? Why am I here? Find their answer in the very first words written in all of scripture. Now, last week, we discovered that God is a worker. The God of the Bible doesn't despise work. He doesn't offload work. He doesn't offload work.

he basically the opening chapter is just a log of his sheer enjoyment of doing what he loves he's creating he observes his work and then he declares it good he's bringing order out of chaos he brings fullness to that which is formless and he looks at everything that he has made and he says mine i like this and and at the conclusion of creation god says at the sixth day let us make man in our own image And at that point in Scripture, and just to think logically, when God says, let us make man in our own image, at that point, what do we know about God? Yeah, God. And we went through this in more depth last week, but God's a creator. But not only that, you have this almost metaphorical language of he's a blacksmith. He's a cultivator. He's a planter. He's a gardener. He's bringing forth beauty. He's an artist. He's a worker. Yeah, he's a worker. In the famed children's book, The baby, you know, are you my mother? Classic. A classic.

Tale of two cities. Are you my mother? The baby bird goes around asking, are you my mother to be, you know, to all these different animals? Why? Because our identity is grounded in where we come from. And what we as creatures know about our creator is that he is a worker. And when God says, let us make man in our own image, I just even want to touch on even that word for image. That word for image in Hebrew is Salem. It can be translated as image or idol. An idol is. is what? When you think about idol, you think about a visible representation, a statue of an otherwise invisible God. And the rulers of the ancient Near East would set up

these various statues of themselves in places wherever they wielded authority and exercised dominion. So you would know this territory belongs to this deity or this ruler. I'm picturing like Michael Jordan's famous statue outside the United Center. But it's like, If you go to the Chicago Bulls home, you know, like Michael Jordan has touched his place. I like when I started talking about pagan deities, you were like, yeah, my mind goes instantly to Michael. MJ. There was other statues that came to mind. He was the most fitting.

Bale, Michael Jordan. Yeah. Well. I don't know how to move on. But there's this idea that, okay, we are gods, sometimes in theological terms, we use vice regents. We were created and put on the earth that God has been. made to manifest and to model and mimic the God that made us and we were to rule in his stead as his image bears. And this is, this is found for us. I think we're going to turn there in Genesis

1. I just want to call out as we turn there the, I almost need to check my own brain to read it with fresh eyes because you start with Genesis 1-1 and you hear- It's like the first sentence you've ever memorized. Absolutely. And it's it can become so familiar. And now as we turn to 128, It's another one that, oh, yeah, like that's so familiar. But actually, if you take a minute to unpack like we will for the next few minutes, there's a ton going on in a very brief amount of words. It's true. And we'll start in 126, actually, just to kind of touch on one thing we left off last week.

When God says, let us make man in our own image, he says, according to our likeness, that first job description, he says, and let them rule. That is the Hebrew word radda. And you can say it by yourself if you're listening or watching, reda and it's a word dripping with regality it means to have dominion and i remember one time you and i were talking about just what god has you know for your life and you're like i don't know you just kind of threw it off the cuff i don't know if it's just illusions of grandeur meaning like if you've ever had that thought i feel like i was made for something big something epic something kingly something

royal well that actually finds its root in the opening chapter of the scripture because humanity was made to rule on behalf of our king the creator of the universe And then in 128, God gives further explanation of what that even means. It says, God bless them, that's Adam and Eve. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it. Now, he blesses them, and he says, be fruitful and multiply. Now, on the surface, God had also told the animal kingdom to be fruitful and multiply. You know, fish are to make more fish.

Lions are to make more lions. The ocean is teeming. The land is teeming. Yeah, birds, let them fly, you know, sea creatures swim and make more sea creatures. But only to humanity is there this unique responsibility of, it says here, subdue it. And then he tells Adam and Eve, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth. I use this example when I was preaching through Psalm 8 a few weeks ago. but if I encountered a blue whale

the blue whale is way bigger than Johnny but if I met a blue whale and a blue whale met me it would be me that named the blue whale and not the other way around why because God has given me and humanity dominion over the creatures of the sea and he has told me in his word to rule over them not an oppressive way but to care to nurture

to steward what God has made this episode is brought to you by one of our ministry partners, the Masters University. One of the things I love about TMU is their commitment to Christ and Scripture. And not only that, they offer 150 different fields of study, all that are established upon a biblical worldview. This is so important, regardless of the field of study you may be going into. They offer engineering, elementary education, music, business. Some of you may know that I studied actually accounting and finance, and I'm so thankful for them at today. But I was so grateful to learn finance, business, accounting from a biblical perspective.

I would encourage you to check out the Masters University by visiting Masters.edu. And when you do, you can even look at our own dial-in page if you go to masters.edu slash dial-in and see if this would be a good fit for you. And if you use our code, dial-in, that'll waive the application fee for you if you're a student or for the student in your life looking to pursue higher education. I wanted to hop in there because I think in our modern context and kind of the cultural milieu, it's often easy to actually like brush by that and feel like people either want to hold up the environment as the god that we're here to serve.

And in a very plain reading there, there's actually a hefty amount of responsibility placed on humanity to exercise authority over. And that's, it seems like such a basic point, but it's one worth reflecting on. And that might be new to a huge portion of the audience that they've kind of glossed over 128 never actually thought about the implications of that reality. Yeah, I mean, it's an important thing. I want to look at this Edenic job description in greater details. With the animals and with the birds, God had said, let them team.

He's saying let nature do what nature does. But with the man, he says, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Now, I want to continue to evaluate this slowly. When God says to be fruitful and multiply, it's not just a call for procreation, even though the family is the cornerstone of society. And that's important, like, especially to mention. in a world that kind of looks down on motherhood. You know, I want to be a big contributor to society.

Well, the cornerstone of society is the family and raising the next generation. It is more, though, than a call for procreation. It is a call, as one pastor says, for civilization. It's not just for more of the human species. It's a call for society. Now, I want to look at this idea of subdue. God is calling them to work, and we get this idea of culture from that word for cultivation. The word subdue is an aggressive word.

It does not mean oppression, but it does have aggressive tones to it. It comes from literally the Hebrew word, cabosh, which is to bring something into submission, to conquer. And Wayne Grudem's book, A Business for the Glory of God, was one of the first books I read on just work and business and how those things are correlated from a biblical perspective. But he says that this word for subdue is to, quote, make the earth useful for human beings and enjoyment, meaning that the garden, as one pastor puts it, was not a product. It was a project.

God put Adam and Eve in a place where they were to function like the God who made them, to build, to engineer, to explore, to design, to plan. God called Adam and Eve, and I think this is kind of one author puts it this way in an epic fashion. He called them into the business of world making. Imitate your God, to explore. And so in all these things, the command is clear, God is telling them to harness the natural resources in his world and to bring Eden into submission. And I think it's worth asking,

what does this even mean or what does it even look like to subdue? Well, and I think the primary thrust here is us acting as little C creators brings glory to God. So then practically, like, make this applicable. What does that look like in, like, let's ground this in the real atoms of the universe?

What does that mean? Well, yeah, I'll put it to you this way. The wedding song, Canon and D, is probably one of the most well-known, violin melodies. But where do you even get that melody from? Well, it comes from someone taking, what's a violin made out of wood? What's the violin bow made out of horsehair? To subdue the earth is to take rosewood, sitka, maple, and coa woods, and to have someone transform it into a guitar. It's to use plant fibers for strings and to take shells for horns and percussion and clay for

pottery, it's to mix and mash ochre with berries and plants to come up with different colors and to grind those different colors with stone and then add some egg yolk and some tree sap for a binding agent and to add some water for blending of consistency, whatever it may be, and to apply that paint to boards and whatever else there may be. It's to use goat hair for tents and to take aloe vera and make medicine out of the aloe plants. It's to take everything in the world that God has made and imitate who he is. as a builder and a creator and so forth.

And when mankind does this, I think in a similar way as to when God created the world, God says, Tov, good. You are made to reflect who I am. And when you take, we don't create in the same way. God creates Barra. He creates XNahilo out of nothing. We create using the raw materials in God's world.

And when we do so, we're imitating him in a way that does bring him glory. And it just strikes me, one, like the beauty just in that of you started with Canon D and then we talk about how these instruments are made and how beauties brought forth. And even like the aesthetics of looking at the instruments. And that's still not to say anything of actually then creating the melody and the music itself that's also beautiful. You can just see how it almost stacks one on top of the other. And there's no end to which that beauty can continue to grow. Correct. Yeah.

And I think the question is, as we think about work, why does God involve us? this way. Like, God could have created a perfectly finished universe with cities and AI and cars and robot drivers. But why does God involve us in this way? Well, I want to put it to you this way. Why do I have my daughter Lily mow the lawn with me? I used to kind of push the mower around with her. Now we've upgraded to a rider. But why do I have Lily mow the lawn? It's not like she's helping me. It actually takes me longer for me to mow it. with her, so why do I have her help me in the morning? On Monday mornings, typically my morning off,

why do I have Lily help me mow the lawn? Well, it's because as a father, I love to involve my daughter in what I'm doing. There should be something in you when you study who God is at the beginning of scripture that makes you want to bounce out of your chair and imitate your God.

And to know that as your creator, God wants to involve you in what I'm doing. When I make a fire and I know how to make fires and I say literally go gather me some sticks and she brings back nine twigs, it's not because it was actually helpful to me, but at least fundamentally, it's because I want to involve her in what I'm doing.

And this is the way God works. For example, in Psalm 145-16, it says that God feeds every living thing. Now, what does that even mean? because we go, yeah, theologically we understand that God is our ultimate provider, but how does God feed every living thing? Well, when you walk into Trader Joe's

and you see the package for orange chicken, I thought you're going with chocolate cover espresso beans. No, but how does he do it? Well, he does it through the person that makes the chicken, makes the sauce, does the packaging, the social media strategist, he does it through the marketing agency, he does it through the customer service rep,

he does it through the person checking you out at the register. He does it through all of these people, He does it through the CPA that balances the books, and he does it through the person that delivers that food and then stocks that food in the grocery store. So how does God feed every living thing? He does it through his image bears. Martin Luther commenting on Psalm 147, 13,

which says God strengthens the bars of the city gates. And that's true. But Luther asked the question, but how does God strengthen the bars of the city? Well, he does it through the blacksmith. He does it through good city ordinances. He does it through wise rulers and, and financial accountants, he uses means.

And I think this is important because sometimes even in the minutia and monotony of our work life, like even thinking about Moses, the greatest dude in the Old Testament, 80 years of his 120 years he spent in the wilderness. And so sometimes we're like, well, I don't know, my life seems so monotonous. Well, like, God, God strengthens the bars of a city and protects people, protects children. Martin Luther says, just through a blacksmith, who's making pins to hold those gates, on. You know, it just strikes me, this is a shout up for my mom, but my mom growing up was a homemaker, and I would often come in as a little boy into their bedroom, and she would just

have, I'm the youngest of five kids, so we had laundry for days. But honestly, it was a common occurrence that my mom would have me come in to their master bedroom, and on the kingbed would just be laid laundry bins of fresh, warm laundry that needed to be folded. And honestly, one of the earliest conversations I can recall having with my mother was her folding socks and tossing them in a pile and literally saying folding to the glory of God hang. And I'm just being like, Mom, I don't want to do this. I want to go downstairs. I want to go play with my cousins. And you're just saying, no, no, no, no.

We get to fold laundry. We fold laundry to the glory of God. And it's this, it's this fundamental idea. And that's a funny story. But truly, she approached her mothering and her keeping of the house with the mindset of unfolding socks to the glory of God. And this is a way that I support my family, protect my family. And so you see God's perspective of what might be just the minutia in your life. And in Genesis 1, when we've been looking at this account of creation from 35,000 feet,

and what you may not know about Genesis 2 is that it's basically a rewind and a slowdown, in particular of that sixth day when God makes man in his own image. Now in Genesis 2, it says in verse 2, by the 7th day, God had completed his, watch this, his work. Then in verse 3, then God blessed the 7th day and sanctified it because he had rested from all of his work. And then in verse five, it says, now no shrub of the field was yet in the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprouted. For the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to cultivate it. Why is there no shrub?

Because there's no man to work it. Again, this idea of like a perfectly manicured lawn is not what you see here. There's a wilderness here, beautiful and good yet untamed, wild, needing to be explored and needing to be subdued. Now in verse 7, it says, then the Lord God formed of dust from the ground, man. and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Now, this idea of forming, God forming man, once again, and I think this is cool.

The Bible is interesting to me. It depicts a craftsman, and he's carefully molding man to perfection. And then God comes face to face with this first creature that he has molded from the dust, and he breathed life into him. Then verse 8, the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden, and there he placed the man who made.

he had formed. He makes a garden and then he says, he creates the dude and then he says, work it. Now, in verse nine, I think this is interesting. Out of the ground, the Lord God caused to grow every tree, three types of tree that is pleasing to the site, good for food, and the tree of the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So four trees. So I want to focus just on two of those. First of all, there is the trees that are good for food. I don't know if it interests you, this interests you about God, but God could have given us just endless dog food, you know, brown slop. I know that there's commercials for dog food that are like smoke salmon and stuff like that,

whatever it may be. This is organic from the farm food. But when it says trees for food, I just want you to think about that for a moment. There are apple trees that produce Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Honey Crisp, citrus trees that yield oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, stone fruit trees, mango, avocado, papaya trees, fig trees, there's nut-bearing trees. God is an artist, but he works, and he works, not just as an expression of his provision, meaning I'm going to provide for you. He could have given us just one thing, but he makes red fruits, like apples, he makes orange fruits, he makes

yellow fruits, he makes blue and purple fruits, all of these different things. I could go on and on, but we not only have 10,000 little taste buds, we have senses with their eyes. That's why when someone, you know, my wife, Lord willing, is going to have a baby. any minute here. Well, hopefully not any minute. FYI. When someone brings you a meal, you know, we got one of those fruit baskets and you look at it, you're like, it almost looks, what, too good to eat?

Why? Because it's an expression of who God is, all of these different colors. And that's part of the thing that we see in the garden. But there's not just that trees that are good for food. But the first tree mentioned is trees that are pleasing to the site. Now, the way that I've been thinking about this, and this is a thing for me, a stunning. thought about God. Not everything that God makes was for its basic utility. It says here that when he made the garden, he made trees not just that were good for food, not just the tree of the knowledge of good

and evil, but trees that were pleasing to the sight, meaning that God made things to punctuate, underscore, and highlight his own commitment to beauty. He made dogwood trees that blossom with pink flowers, magnolia trees, cherry blossom trees. I used to read when we were grown up in Wheaton under a willow tree that would dance in the wind. Now, you and I grew up about 30 minutes away from one of the most iconic ballparks in the world. Rigley Field, baby. Oh, yeah. Come on. It's known for two things. A manual scoreboard, because people are sick of the digital age. and two, the ivy that adorns the outfield walls. For like half the year.

Yeah. And what makes it so special is that people view that ivy, they think it's beautiful. And the question is who made that? Well, God, he made Jasmine. He made peonies. He made Delphinium and Foxglove and hydrangeas and lavender. Why? Not because we eat those things, but because in some way their beauty reflects who God is.

It got a truth and beauty and goodness. And I think it's easy to circumvent and not see the world through God's eyes in this regard. Yeah, well, and again, it's just so important. There are people by personality who are more drawn to utilitarian uses. Like they get a rise out of squeezing out like the last piece of toothpaste out of the tube. Thank you. I almost went with a jar. You're a freak.

This part of God, his abundance and his beauty is until we kind of looked at this before recording and before I heard you speak on it for the first time, it had never clicked for me. And it's sitting right there for us to behold. Yeah, I think part of the reason why Christians throughout the centuries have created the greatest works of art and architecture is to point to who God is, his goodness, his truth, his beauty. I spent several months after college in Prague, and you walk into these great cathedrals that are older than our country, and they draw your attention upward.

That's the whole point of architecture is because it draws you to consider the architect. Who made this, right? And that's what God did with his world. Even sometimes from going back to your question of like, hey, is this necessary? I think it's easy to devalue the things that God values because when someone makes something grand,

I think sometimes we think, oh, that's being wasteful. But I think it, no, no, God says that's, that's imitating me. It's not only that it's, we can miss that God, we can miss the fact that, oh, God created things that are beautiful. Oh, that's awesome. Like, we should appreciate that. But it actually goes deeper than that is, no, God created things of beauty. It's a calling for us to do the same, to work with beauty and all the things we're called to. And this is actually tied into other places in the Old Testament.

Is that right? Yeah, I think even if you were to ask the question, where's the first time we see the term filled with the spirit of God in the scripture? Well, it's not an Acts. It's actually in Exodus 31, and it's not in relation to Moses. It's in relationship to Bezalel,

who is the craftsman for the tabernacle. And God looks at a guy who never, as far as we know, speaks a single word, preaches a single sermon in the Bible, but that is crafting and sculpting the table, tabernacle and God says, this guy gets it. This guy is filled with the spirit of God, not because he's preaching great sermons, but because he is reflecting who God is as an artist. And I think even sometimes we say things like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? That's a familiar expression.

But that's not necessarily true when you look at God's word because beauty is objective. There is a transcendence to beauty because God made beauty and deep down everyone understands this. God is hardwired within her hearts and appreciation for beauty and for truth and for goodness. I once heard Paul Twist tell the story of a man who was sitting in Central Park, a blind man. And he was holding up a sign in Central Park that said, I am blind. And he was holding a hat right in front of them for people to put coins in and to help him out. And there were a man walked by with some marketing background and saw that there were no coins in the hat. No one had helped him.

and he had some marketing background, and so he wrote four additional words on the man's sign. And when he went to work and came back, he saw that the hat was full of money. And so it prompts the question, well, what did you write? What are those four words? Well, to the words, I am blind,

the man added these four words, and it is spring. And instantly, people felt for the guy. There was already this implied element of truth. I am blind. There was the perceived element of goodness and ethics, we should help him out. But what was missing is this element of beauty,

that people were looking out at all the flowers, all the trees, all of the beauty of Central Park. And at that point, they were compelled to help him because when you intertwine that three-cordid strand of truth, beauty, and goodness, it coalesces into something that prompts God's image bears to sympathize with the man. Because deep down, there is something of Eden in us

that pulls us back to God's original design and intention in the garden. And that's, it's a helpful place to maybe land the plane. But I think I often reflect, or you may have heard it said frequently, like there's a God-sized hole in your heart. Many people have said that it's obviously true in ecclesiasty sense. I think maybe an underappreciated second truth that you're drawing out for us is God created us to, enjoy, participate, and create, or partner in, collaborate in creating beauty.

When we hear that story of that blind man, as you say, and it is spring, there's something inside your heart that actually feels like it turns over in your chest. And that same part has been created by God. And it's one of those just ultimate leveling realities of like when you say it clearly and articulately, you're like, yeah, I know that's there. But it's Often it just hasn't been kind of brought out to the forefront, and that's what God's instilling on us in Genesis 1 and 2. Yeah, just a, I think, a big idea of what I'm trying to show as we look to God's word is that work is dignified, because God himself is a worker and commissions us to work. And this is a revolutionary thought, not just to the ancient man, but to the modern man who views work often as a curse.

Philip Jansen put it this way. If God came into the world, what would he be like? For the ancient Greeks, he might have been a philosopher king. The ancient Romans might have looked at him for a just and noble statesman. But how does the God of the Hebrews come into the world? Answer, as a carpenter, because he's a worker. Now, a few thoughts for the coming weeks. You might be saying, Johnny, this is fairly utopian.

This is pre-fall. We're going to talk about the fall and the implications of that on our work. And you might be saying, Johnny, I'm not sure how changing diapers is the equivalent of the regality of the word reda. I don't feel like I'm subduing the earth when I clock into my shift at Bojangles. Furthermore, what about the rest? You're just talking about the work part.

You totally skipped over that God rested on the seventh day. We're going to look at all those things, and it's important to remember again that it's nothing less than a whole Bible that makes a whole Christian. And so we want to look at these things comprehensively, but you would be missing the story of Scripture to not see that God himself is a worker.

He loves to work and that you as an image bear are called him to reflect a God who is a builder, a creator, an architect, an artist, a poet, and a musician. And when you do that in a way that glorifies him, it brings honor to God. And he says, Tov. That's good. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to open it up and study with us, Johnny. Thanks, Hank.